Michael Watkins and Susan Rosegrant--a Harvard Business School professor
and a Kennedy School case writer respectively--have written a book that
succeeds on several levels but that is ultimately less powerful than it
might have been, probably as a result of trying to serve too many masters.
The authors provide really fascinating accounts of four post-Cold War negotiations--nuclear
arms proliferation talks between the U.S. and North Korea; the Israeli-Palestinian
talks leading to the Oslo Accords; the creation of the Gulf War coalition
(1991); and the confrontation between the US (and Europe) and Serbia that
led to the Dayton Peace Accords--that each resulted, in their view, in
some kind of major breakthrough, some difficult to achieve result.
These accounts are based on what must have been extensive interviews with
key players, who are quoted frequently and who share the concerns and concepts
that influenced them. The book would be worthwhile even if
all it contained were these detailed, often thrilling, narratives of several
significant recent foreign policy conflicts.

But, in addition, these four negotiations provide the authors with the
jump off points for extensive discussions of the personalities involved
and the tactics they used. The book is published by the Program on
Negotiation at Harvard Law School, and in many ways it represents an attempt
to bring the Socratic method out of the class room and on to the written
page. In parenthetical asides they ask the reader to consider why
certain players took certain actions or how a key decision may have influenced
the whole course of events, etc.. As you read, the authors are virtually
present, pushing and prodding (in a helpful way) to make sure that you
are conscious of the negotiating ploys that participants utilize.

Meanwhile, in their own analysis of events, they spell out the four
core concepts of what they call "breakthrough negotiation" :

They use innumerable examples to illustrate these concepts and principles
and the overall structure certainly provides a framework that would be
useful to anyone involved in negotiations. In this regard, they have
produced what will likely be an excellent textbook for use in the classroom.

So far so good; but the book also seems to be at least partially intended
for a wider audience, and here it runs into some difficulties, largely
as a result of the textbook format and of the choice of geopolitical negotiations
as a subject matter. As a threshold matter, I don't believe
that these negotiations between nation states hold terribly many lessons
for business executives, who are presumably a significant portion of the
intended wider audience, because one or both of the participants in these
cases usually lack the option of just ending the negotiation, an option
which is almost always available in the business setting. Coca-Cola
can simply decide not to buy Joe's Cola and can walk away, but Serbia can't
really ignore the United States and Western Europe. No businessman,
not even a Bill Gates, is ever likely to have the overwhelming leverage
that the U.S. brings to the negotiating table.

The biggest problem though is that if you apply the first of the authors'
own core concepts (diagnosing structure) to their chosen four examples
you see that the breakthrough generally occurred prior to, or at, the moment
negotiations started. Thus, the actual content of the Oslo Accords
was pretty much insignificant; what really mattered was the implicit admission
by the parties that Israel and a Palestinian state were each realities
that the other side needed to cope with. Even today, with the relationship
between Israel and the Palestinians at its all time nadir, they are relatively
close to a final accord. Israel will eventually declare a Palestinian
state unilaterally and the Palestinians will be forced to accept the boundaries
that Israel imposes. The breakthrough occurred with Oslo when the
two sides, just by entering negotiations, acknowledged each others existence
as a political fact.

Similarly, when the United States sat down to discuss nuclear proliferation
with the North Koreans, the real drama was over and North Korea had won.
That this was true is revealed in a chart that the authors include which
analyzes the interests of the two parties :

United States *Preventing proliferation
of nuclear weapons
*Preventing an arms race
in Asia
*Undermining the DPRK (Democratic
Peoples Republic of Korea)

It is obvious that North Korea could effectively achieve its aims regardless
of what the final agreement actually required. They were bargaining
with the U.S. as an equal, would certainly get some aid and would save
money by not having to build nuclear weapons, and they would essentially
make the U.S. the guarantor of their security, however unwitting or unwilling,
because, having negotiated the agreement, there was no way the U.S. was
going to turn around and topple the DPRK. And so, what did the U.S.
stand to get out of the negotiation? Well, even if we realized all
our goals, wed still have strengthened one of the most loathsome regimes
on the planet, left them free to pursue an unlimited conventional arms
buildup, and, just as in Iraq, could have little way of knowing whether
they'd truly given up their nuclear arms program. Here again, we
see that the details of the negotiation didn't much matter; the structure
had already determined the results.

The two other cases are somewhat different, but in both instances the
inevitable conclusion of the negotiations was determined at the moment
that the United States determined it was serious about pursuing a goal.
Mr. Watkins and Ms Rosegrant are quite frank about the fact that once the
world's only superpower announced its interest in these matters, the other
parties were left with few or no options but to go along or risk being
destroyed. Realistically, with America headed to war, the only safe
place is at her side, so James Baker had little trouble lining up allies
for the Gulf War. And once America demonstrated it's seriousness
in the Balkans, by bombing Serbs, Slobodan Milosevic had to sue for peace.
Again, the breakthroughs preceded, or were independent of, the negotiations.

It is of interest that in all of these cases, and in several others
that they could have included (South Africa and Northern Ireland), the
most important single factor leading to breakthrough was the final defeat
of the Soviet Union in the late 80s and early 90s. This removed
vital financial, material, and other support from such terrorist groups
as the PLO and the IRA; removed nuclear protection from such rogue nations
as Iraq and North Korea; and removed Western support for brutal but strategically
important regimes like the apartheid government in South Africa and military
governments in Latin America and elsewhere. In a unilateral world,
dominated by America, the structure of negotiations is largely determined
by U.S. wishes and she and her allies typically reap the benefits.
Had the Soviet Union existed, North Korea might not even have been willing
to negotiate with the U.S., nor the PLO with Israel, nor the Serbs with
anybody, nor the IRA with the Protestant Irish, etc., etc., etc....
In the absence of a substantial opponent, american policy tends to prevail,
even if, as in Korea, that policy is ill-considered.

Mind you, the authors are so thorough, insightful, and honest that they
do discuss many of these issues, even if only tangentially, and they are
forthright in depicting "breakthrough negotiators" as those folks (Richard
Holbrooke and James Baker, for example) who keep their eye on the big picture
and don't get distracted by the particulars of agreements. (There's
a funny bit where Holbrooke is totally dismissive of questions over where
national borders were going to be drawn, demonstrating genuine contempt
for what were mere details on the way to the foreordained peace.)
But if they were writing a pure analysis of these conflicts, one assumes
they would really pounce on these factors and use them to show where the
real key to such breakthroughs lies, not in the negotiation process, but
in the mere acceptance of negotiation. In fact, all of this could
probably be considered to fall under their own broad rubric of "diagnosing
structure." I guess my quibble here is that they aren't rigorous
enough in this diagnosis. On the other hand, if they were as rigorous
as I want them to be, the detailed tactical analysis that makes up the
rest of the book would be rendered pretty meaningless; they would end up
sacrificing the textbook in the process of demonstrating how well just
one part of their analytical structure works.

As is, Mr. Watkins and Ms Rosegrant have produced an excellent textbook
and an absorbing depiction of how four major international conflicts were
resolved (at least temporarily). I'd recommend the book for use in
the classroom without reservation, and to the general reader with only
mild qualifications. And I look forward to reading the essays and
articles in which they apply their framework to bring much needed clarity
to seemingly impenetrable conflicts.